Field Notes from Portugal

Contemporary Women Artists, nomad life, Outdoor life, painting, Sketchbooks

A sketchbook recently filled – vibrant markets and fishing villages in Southern Portugal.. a tiny film.

My big love is being outside in the landscape and drawing and painting. I have just returned from a lovely ‘milestone’ birthday trip to Portugal where I got to do plenty of that and, unusually for me, worked in just one sketchbook and filled it up. Would you like to see?
I enjoyed the sights and smells of market days particularly and depicting these bustling, loud and mouthwatering days was my inspiration this time.

This is also my first time filming my sketchbook – so, fingers crossed!!

I spent some of the holiday drawing and painting with my good friend Mary Price and we hoked up for some of our time with another woman, Julie Sajous, a new friend found loitering with sketchbook and pens.

This common ground of drawing (followed by eating and drinking) is such a uniting factor you know! In times which seem to polarise people we need to find our tribes, connect and lift each other up!

Painting alone and painting with friends – such a great way to connect with place and people. Here are me, Mary Price and Julie Sajous.

That’s me on the left looking like I might fall over backwards into a cactus!

I would love to hear how you record your travels if you do.

Do you draw or photograph and do you think there’s a big difference? Or maybe you keep a written journal? Let me know in the comments ….

Sketchbook colour trials and a pastel da nata (very lifelike!!)

A bientôt

Probably had a beer

Saturday market, Olhão.

For now …

a bientôt

Clare

🧡

Do read my Substack here

walking and drawing in rural france

Art, nomad life, Sketchbooks

January 2024

By now you probably know how much I like to wander about, my head full of silly songs and musings and my backpack filled with pencils, watercolours and a sketchbook.

Luckily I am house and cat sitting this couple of weeks in the beautiful Languedoc, France, staying in a tiny medieval village and enjoying some warmer weather than back in the UK. Here it is dry and around 20 degrees but as you can tell by the video it’s been pretty windy.

Today I wandered and wondered and shot a little film to show you where I walked and the gorgeous studio (of cousin John Baldwin) I come back to for working on a little bit of gouache painting. I went about 6 miles in all and then ventured out again to stand and draw in the little square.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PWvKCbIPyEI%3Fsi%3DvnUVvlD3rqZH_g7s

The video gets clearer after the first few seconds – come on my walk with me…

I have peace and quiet and sole use of the house – just me and my mind. It’s always interesting what that gets up to when alone and keeping off social media mostly. I enjoy observing its monkey tricks !!

At the end of the day I went along to one of the village squares and stood to draw where I encountered an elderly man who enjoyed telling me about his paintings and a young woman called Nancy who has illustrated children’s books. So friendly – and they didn’t even laugh at my French!

France is very wabi-sabi, there’s always beauty in the nooks and crannies of back streets. Here’s my favourite example from a door today – god only knows what kind of technology this is!!

I painted this little scene from the bench by the bridge – the medieval buildings are suitably wonky enough to be painted in a gale! Afterwards the cat came to give me her autograph…

Next time I come I will bring my harmonium – it needs a little work doing to it’s coupler mechanism… a useful industry in a teeny village…

Back in the studio in the middle of the day I played with gouache – needed to use the pink to capture the chill of yesterday…

Anyway I may work into this a bit tomorrow when it’s light.

This was the original drawing I did on my knee in the hills – so far I prefer it to the painting but then that’s not complete and I’m sure I will warm up!

My greatest pleasure though is my lovely new sketchbook – a Pith – lovely smooth and strong paper and good for watercolour and other wet stuff at 200g paper. I have suddenly become a big fan of smoooooooth paper!

I will try to post some more here over the next couple of days – thank you for dropping by!!

Stream of Consciousness Sketchbook

Sketchbooks, Uncategorized

How I use my sketchbook to find the content of my thoughts

Sketchbook as a portal. This is how my mind gets going sometimes…I’m not sure how much control I have over it, but it’s a way of using a sketchbook to find stuff going on in this head ….

CLARE WASSERMANN

9 FEB 2024

These are the images for this particular stream of consciousness sketchbook. They are copies of a long series of paintings I made on the sea wall in blustery North Wales through which I embody the storm. This is a section in my PhD research which I have really enjoyed documenting. I find that I don’t really have too much control over what I am writing – I leave it to come through me in a way akin to the notion of ‘enchantment’ spoken about by activist and leader Nina Simons. She advocates taking a solitary walk and seeing what comes through you as a form of contemplative practice. Here I paste images made by myself and then open myself up to what writing is there…it’s an experience I enjoy, it’s immersive. It’s part of sadhana a practice in jñāna yoga.

Here are some pages:

This I call the questioning of abstract ideas through the vehicle of images. I am questioning here the nature of reality. Have you ever thought about that?

I like these two quotes by Margaret Davidson on contemporary drawing:

When you look more closely you see beyond the images and into the variations of those internal ideas.

Davidson 2011: 174

and

Consciousness in drawing is one of those states of mind that, once you reach it, you can’t imagine the time before reaching it. Once you know it, you can’t return to not knowing it. When you become conscious and intentional, you cross over from some realm of ignorance to true awareness.

Davidson 2011:178

Ref: Davidson, Margaret (2011), Contemporary drawing: key concepts and techniques, New York: Random House.

She’s spot on as far as I’m concerned.

This week in the studio I am working particularly on this painting – by next week’s newsletter it will be done. It’s one of three that have occupied me during January and February – they are towards a solo exhibition in August in Much Wenlock, Shropshire UK. Which reminds me I must get cracking on that work…speed up a bit!